Ayashiku mo yoru no yukue o shiranu kana kyō higurashi no koe wa kikedomo

English Translation

How strange it is that
I should not know where the night
is going; and yet
all this day long I have heard
the voice of the evening cicada.

Meaning

How strange that I should not know where the night is going — and yet all day long I have heard the evening cicada's voice.

Commentary

16 She Feels the Frailty of a Wife's Position

In the first year of Kōhō, when spring had passed and summer come, Kaneie took to lodging at the palace on night duty. He would come at dawn, stay through the day, and at nightfall go back again; and while she was puzzling over this, the first cry of the evening cicada was heard. Deeply moved, she spoke a poem, and he too, no doubt, found it hard to leave. Since nothing came of it, however, his heart slackened again as before. On a moonlit night, when they had been talking of trifles and there came back to her the time when they had spoken together of things that touched the heart, she said a poem; and the reply came as if in jest. He seemed dependable enough, and yet the place he appeared to regard as his own home was elsewhere, so that the world proved altogether other than she had wished. For a woman with good fortune, it is no rare thing to keep a husband of many years and to have many children; while she was left with nothing certain, and only her thoughts multiplied.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and at this time lodged at the palace on frequent night duty; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The place he appeared to regard as his own home is the other house he kept as his base.
It is summer in the first year of Kōhō, and the place is the author's dwelling.
She was puzzling over Kaneie's way of coming at dawn, staying the day, and going back to the palace at nightfall, when the first cry of the evening cicada was heard. Deeply moved, she spoke this poem.
The narrative says that at this he too, no doubt, found it hard to leave. Since nothing came of it, his heart slackened again, and the account moves on to the moonlit night and "Kumori yo no tsuki to waga mi no yukusue no obotsukanasa wa izure masareri."

The opening means strangely, unaccountably, and takes up directly the narrative's own phrase about puzzling over it. The word for night in the second line is the night itself, but given a man who disappears at every nightfall it also sounds the word for calling in somewhere, stopping by. The third line closes on an exclamation, and what follows is added as a kind of reason. The name of the cicada in the fourth line contains the words for living out the day, and the poem turns on it: she heard its cry as the light was going, and so, having had him with her the whole day long, she still does not know where he goes once the day is done. The seasonal feeling of the first cry of the season passes straight over into suspicion of a husband's nights, and that movement is the whole art of the poem: the reproach is carried entirely by the insect's name, and there is no demand anywhere in it.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other